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Despite the popular stereotype that we're all a bunch of svelte beach-bunnies out here in California, the news hits today that flabber is on the rise for L.A. County's poor preschoolers. While New York City's low-income toddlers are enjoying a three-percent dip in obesity rates, a drop that's consistent with many other big U.S. cities, a new CDC study reports that obesity rates for L.A.'s low-income three and four-year-olds rose four percent in the last nine years, reflecting rates much higher than normal in the U.S. While our car-centric culture takes some of the blame, the study also posits that New York's WIC program pushed healthy lifestyles choices at an earlier point and also cites cultural demographics as a factor. HuffPo explains, "In 2011, about 85 percent of the Los Angeles children in the study were Hispanic, and most were Mexican-American - a group with the highest reported childhood obesity rates, at least among boys." [HuffPo]